Hypocritical

"I am the best-tempered man there ever was, yet I have already killed three men..."

Sure Candide, you really are one of the best-tempered men I've ever heard of. 

Not only did the irony of this whole chapter make my stomach ache with laughter, it also made me realize how many false expectations we have of ourselves every day. We would all like to believe the best things about us, as Candide obviously does. Sadly, sometimes we fail to see how wrong we are about ourselves. 

I am strong.

I am not prejudiced.

I am always in a good mood. 

I most certainly do not have my mother's temper.

Oh, how naive I have been sometimes.

How sad that we never really know ourselves, let alone each other. Why is it that Voltaire seems to point out so many bitter truths? Why is it that everything he says in the book, contains a double meaning which I believe we can all relate to?

Throughout the years I have found that most of the statements I use to describe myself are merely an image of what I want to be, not what I really am. Voltaire strongly agrees with what I am saying because he clearly ridicules that aspect of humans with Candide's claims to be "the best-tempered man there ever was." As I read I realized how pathetic humans (yes, I include myself in the generalization) really are. 

The author points out the hypocrisy that lives in all of us, as we claim to be better people than we are, yet hate the ones who do exactly the same thing. We live by our views on people, and the images we have in our head. Images about the way life should be, images which portray how everything should work, images which make us believe to be something we have never been.

Whatever happened to no hypocrites?

Please, the day there is no hypocrisy on this planet is the day humans become extinct.

We are a species which is completely hypocritical in every aspect for our lives: we pray for common good yet expect to have the very best for ourselves,  we say that prejudices are wrong but deep inside we know that we have prejudiced at least once, we claim to be the smartest animals on the planet… But I don’t see the other animals slowly killing it all, do you?

This hypocrisy is obviously what Voltaire is targeting with Candide’s words, and as a part of the hypocritical human population I want it to stop. But is there a way to stop it anymore?

Try, for just an hour to act with everything you’ve ever said. Try to stand by all your comments without being a complete hypocrite about one of them.

Hard isn’t it???